4 - Visible Nation: Scaling Culture

Summary

This chapter focuses on the phenomenon of representing the nation as a problem of scale but also as a contingency of scale. It approaches the idea of Korea as a discrete cultural entity as a question of scale, which I define as a discursive framing device that enables us to orient or reorient ourselves toward a given element of our social worlds that is otherwise difficult or impossible to make sense of. Korea, in this sense, is treated both in terms of being able to be scaled and perhaps only ever being subject to scale. The chapter first looks at the scaling of Korea via the color red, which emerged as synonymous with the nation following the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and how such a chromatic association, even if highly unstable, has been embraced since. It then looks to examples of scaling Korea via historical allusions to the ancient Koryo dynasty, a process which demands a strategic manipulation of historical fact. Finally, it analyzes the global allusiveness of a small series of islets whose ownership remains disputed between Korea and Japan, and unpacks the implications of the impossibility of representing the territory to scale.